Thoughts Of A Student
by Acherubis
Summary: Post Revelation 6.8. One of Methos former students tries to come to terms with her new knowledge about Methos having been one of the horsemen.


**Disclaimer: Highlander and its characters are property of Panzer/ Davis. I own nothing and I don't intend to make profit of any sort. The purpose of this fanfiction is solely to entertain.**

**This is the first fanfic I ever posted. Feel free to comment if you like it. If you don't please comment as well but be polite. Constructive criticism is always welcome. Thanks.**

I thought I knew him… at least a little. He plays an important part in my life and I thought I was important to him as well. I am not so sure anymore. The man I presumed to know is truly someone completely different.

Learning about Kronos and the horsemen was a shock. I guess it was not just for me but for everyone else involved; MacLeod, Joe…

My mind still has trouble fusing the Methos I know with the Methos who was Death when he rode with the horsemen. It doesn't fit. It makes no sense. Or does it?

I try not to judge but no matter how hard I try, the picture I have of the oldest living immortal becomes tainted with doubt. It's hard not to lose myself in it because it means I begin to doubt myself as well. In all those almost two millennia I am around now he never told me about that part of his past. Does that mean he does not trust me? Did I do anything wrong that made him decide not to let me in on the story?

I try to recall the things I know about the old man; the many, mostly little things he revealed over the centuries. What I come up with are a lot of trivialities, nothing important, really; the kind of things everybody posts on their internet profiles nowadays.

So I try to dig deeper, remembering times and places I'd rather forget. But now I have to visit them in order to find my balance again, to redefine my picture of the mystery that is Methos.

A particular conversation we had at the end of World War II comes to my mind. I just quit my service as a nurse at a hospital in Poland and visited Heidelberg on my way to France. It was one of those times when you see an old friend after a long absence and you instantly know something is wrong. He was on the move. I had been lucky to catch him before he left for "a sunnier place". He seemed depressed and agitated. It is not very often that he lets you see him in an emotional state like that and it worried me that he allowed it at the time. I asked him what bothered him and I still remember the answer.

"So much death", he said, "so many lives wasted because of a little painter from Austria who set his mind on being superior to the rest of the world."

It was not his fault, I told him in response. I didn't know how else to comfort him. As it turned out, it was no comfort at all. Methos got angry; very much to a point where I began to be afraid of him.

There was an expression in his eyes I almost forgot so long it had been that I last saw it; something animalistic, like a predator trapped in a cage with no chance to escape it. He paced the room back and forth, back and forth. If he tried to figure how to express his thoughts to me in a way I could comprehend or simply to calm the urge to yell at me for the stupidity of my statement I don't know. When he answered he was still angry but his voice was even as if nothing in the world could disturb his composure.

"This is not about whose fault it is", he told me in no uncertain terms and it made me feel very stupid indeed. "This is about the whole atrocity of it all. No one should be allowed to rule superior over the rest. It is cowardly, it is unjust and above all it is inhuman. I have never seen a dictatorship working for the best of its people. The result is not a better life but fear and anguish and hate. Oh, your subjects may be obedient, some even to the brink of self-sacrifice but not because they respect you, not because they love you, no, simply because they fear you; because they know if they don't do as you please they will be punished, tormented, maybe killed. Fear is a powerful weapon. I dare say the most powerful of them all. You know what bothers me the most? That mankind has learned nothing from their previous mistakes. We repeat them over and over again."

I couldn't argue with that. I still can't because it's true.

The conversation was still in my head even weeks after I arrived in Paris. What Methos said that rainy day in Heidelberg made me think. He was still able to feel compassion after all the cruelty he had witnessed in this war. I admired that ability because my own feelings toward the victims were much more indifferent. Not because I intended to be cruel but simply because I couldn't bare the pain of those people. Everyone has a different way of dealing with unpleasant events in their lives. Some embrace them as if they were old friends, others prefer to run from them and some try to forget them. I am to be counted in the last category. I try to forget but every now and then, some memories rear their ugly heads and I have to deal with them.

I think he tries the same but for some reason it is harder for him. Maybe because there are so many more experiences to count into the calculation. No matter the reasons, it makes him a better man in my eyes.

###

Another memory forms in my head: my first encounter with Methos. At that time I was about 150 years old. Nobody ever told me why I didn't age or why my wounds healed so fast. I thought of myself as an abomination and most of the time avoided the company of others in fear that someone could discover my secret. For days I felt like I had been followed. Sometimes a strange feeling in my head, like the dizziness one experiences when looking down from a great height, alarmed me but I couldn't figure the reason for it. I had to learn about the buzz yet and that it was a warning when another of my kind was near.

One day, when I wandered the forest I was living in, I suddenly heard the noise of someone chopping wood. Curiosity drew me closer and there was that feeling in my head again. I hid behind a broad tree but he found me nonetheless. I was paralyzed like a mouse in front of a snake when I felt a blade pressed to my throat from behind. I couldn't move and I guess if I had it would have been my death sentence. There was no choice other than to wait what would happen next.

He looked at me then. The coldness in his eyes still gives me the creeps even now, almost two thousand years later. I never saw such cruel, analytic judgement before and never did again. It chilled me to the bone. He didn't say a word for what seemed like eternity. Then the questioning began. Who am I? What am I doing here? Are there others following me?

I was barely able to think straight no less speak but I strongly felt if I didn't answer he wouldn't bother to keep me alive even though I posed no threat to him, unarmed and frightened as I was. The sword never left my throat until he was satisfied with what I had to say.

He never told me why he let me go in the end. Maybe he pitied me; maybe I was too insignificant to be worth his attention. I was dismissed with a slap to my backside and the warning never to come back and to never tell anyone I met him.

Of course, I wouldn't think of telling a soul of that frightening encounter, but I ignored the rest of the warning. No matter how much that unknown stranger scared me, I was curious and come to think of it, I guess I felt he could explain things to me. So I came back to his camp almost every day. From the distance, I watched him performing his daily chores and his sword exercises which I found fascinating. Unfortunately, one day I came too close and was stabbed right into the heart before I even knew what hit me. I should have heeded the warning not to come back.

When I revived he stood over me with those cold eyes again. It was as if he was dissecting me like an insect with that look. Yet again, he didn't finish me for good.  
"Do you know what just happened to you?" he asked instead. I nodded. I knew I died. It happened before but the rest was lost on me. He must have seen all the questions in my eyes that I was too afraid to ask for he helped me up, not too gently I might add, and ordered me to sit by the fire. As soon as I sat down a pair of dead rabbits were thrown my way as well as a little knife that landed in the loose earth beside me just barely missing my thigh.

"You do know how to skin rabbits, don't you, woman", he harshly snapped at me when I gazed at him questioningly. I didn't know what to make of the situation but my last death still fresh in mind I didn't dare arguing and did as I was told.

Later that night he would tell me: "You will only speak when you're asked and you will do as I please. As long as you keep me satisfied I will teach you what you need to know about our kind; if not…."

He never finished the sentence but there was no need for him to do so. I understood perfectly.

###

I let more memories pass my inner eye, good and bad. I try to analyse the changes we both underwent over the centuries.  
Were they good changes? Yes, I think for the most part they were.

Do I understand better now? I am not sure. But then again, how do you understand a life that lasted for five millennia? I am not quite certain if even Methos himself understands all of it.

And where does that leave me? I guess it leaves me with the realization that not everything is black and white; that circumstances can bring out the best or the worst in people no matter if mortal or immortal. I, too, have done things in my life I'd rather forget, things I would not tell anyone.

So is it my fault Methos kept his past with the horsemen a secret for so long? No it is not. Neither is it my fault nor does it have anything to do with the question if he trusts me or not. Moral these days simply doesn't allow people to understand a thing so dark and cruel and it doesn't allow us to forgive it, either. We are too quick to judge and too rash to throw the first stone because certain concepts of life are lost on us. I don't claim to be an exception from that rule and that may have been the reason he never spoke of it. After all, he is just a human being like the rest of us who wants to be accepted for who he is.

And isn't that what we all want?


End file.
